One of my good friends (wow, I’ve known you for 12 years!!) came back to town for a few days for another mutual friends baby shower.  While she was here we had a quick photo session & also some time just playing around reminiscing about old times.  In addition I don’t know how many stories she told my wife, but I’m pretty sure none of them were true!

I titled the post, “Laura’s House” since when we were in high school, her house is the one all of us would go to hang out.  It was normal for us to have 10 people there on an afternoon, jumping on the trampoline (and getting water poured on us while on the trampoline), swimming, watching movies, or just plain hanging out.

Tuesdays wedding was fantastic up at the Oakland LDS Temple.  We were lucky enough to be the only wedding for the day up there, so we weren’t rushed at all with our formals on the Temple steps, and we didn’t have to worry about having miscellaneous people hanging out in our backgrounds as well.  We ended up walking around the grounds photographing for around two hours.  Even though I’ve photographed lots of weddings here, I still am amazed that I can always seem to find either a new location or a new angle to photograph from.

My assistant Shane and I left San Jose around 9:30 to make sure we got up there plenty early, since traffic can be horrid heading up that direction.  Since we got there early, we spent a some time on the grounds bouncing some image ideas off each other.

We also were enjoying the weather, which was cloudy & cool at first, but a few minutes before Peter & Jaime came out of the Temple the sun came out along with some heat.  The breeze that we had during the afternoon was great though.  It kept us from getting too hot out there!

About two weeks ago I went out with Isaac and we spent an hour or so cruising around downtown San Jose looking for places  to have him photographed at.  We found a fantastic spot out there and made good use of our time.  We will probably doing a second set since due to time constraints we had to head home early.

Well this is part two of my trip out to Bishop/Eastern Sierras.  It was still hot (95+) the entire time, and by the end of the trip I think Adam was getting a little tired of it.  He had a great time though hanging out with both sets of grandparents.

We made the best use of our time while we were out there, and visited lots of different places.  One place on our list was Erik Schat’s Bakkery in Bishop.  They’ve got some of the most delicious bread/pastries/candies I’ve had in a long time!

We also took a trip up to Mammoth Mtn area, where we spent some time hiking around & playing in the water.

This kid is crazy.  The water is freezing cold, it was windy & a little chilly, and he was as happy as a clam.  That is until he fell into the water and got soaked!

Remember, you are being watched!

On the last day of our trip we headed up the Ancient Bristlecone Forest about 20mi outside of Big Pine.  On the way we passed the remnants of this train station.

The forest is at around 10,000ft elevation, and some of these trees are 3000+ years old.

The view from the meadow looking west towards the Sierras.  Though they’re a couple hundred miles away, LA would be off to the left, and Reno would be to the right.

Mount Whitney is the tall peak on the right.  My inlaws had climbed to the top of the peak at around 10am, and headed back down.  They ended up making to the parking lot at Whitney Portal at about 5:3opm, approx 21 days since they started their hike in the Yosemite Valley.

Just like my parents, my in laws were not told their grandson was coming.  This was their reaction to the first time they saw him.

We decided that our own bed sounded better than the campsite, so we left Whitney Portal Sunday afternoon and got home around 2am the next morning.

So from a previous post I mentioned my inlaws were hiking the John Muir Trail in Yosemite.  This is the week I’m heading up to pick them up from Lone Pine, California.  In addition to picking them up, I have ancestors who lived in Bishop California and in the surrounding towns.  So I packed up my 2 1/2 year old, and met up with my parents in Bishop who drove out from UT.  My parents had no clue that I was bringing their grandson, so they had some great looks of surprise when they saw him.

We spent two days checking out the courthouse for old records that involve my ancestors and enjoying the area.  We also took advantage of some spare time, and drove out to Manazar, which is known as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during WWII.  We also took a visit to the Laws Railroad Museum, which is a couple miles outside of Bishop on Hwy 6.  Since my kid LOVES (understatement) trains, tractors, trucks, all that good stuff, this was a playground for him.  The only thing which would have made it better was if it hadn’t of been 96 degrees outside.

We caught the tail end of a freighter as we were pulling into Escalon.  I mentioned to my son that it would be perfect if another train came through.  At that moment right before I got to the tracks the lights came on & we watched this NB train go through.

For you movie buffs, this is Engine #3, who has been in over 100 movies, TV shows, and commercials.  For people in my generation, this was the engine that was used in Back to the Future III.  It is at the Jamestown Train Museum in Jamestown, California.

We got onto a tour & Adam got to play on one of the machines that was used to check the rails & ties.  You would push/pull the front (as Adam is doing) to move it forward/backwards.

Finally in Yosemite, playing on the rocks.

We took a quick trip to Tuolomne Meadows so the kid could get in his daily dirt fix.

Caught some deer as they were crossing the river.  I was wishing I had my 70-200 instead of the 85 lens on me.  I left the big lens in the car

Don’t even THINK about taking my chapstick!

Self portrait (gotta prove I was on the trip!) of me & Adam near the top of Tioga Pass

So I missed out on getting the post out on Friday since I had some friends in town and we decided it was time to go to the beach.  We headed out to Palm Beach State Park in Watsonville, CA.  It was fun seeing my little guy kind of get into the water this time, though he mostly just wanted to roll around in the sand.

It was the first time my friends little girl had seen the ocean & gotten to touch it since they live in Utah.

This is the reason why he is now nicknamed, “The Sandman”

Normally at home there isn’t a pile of sand he jumps on like that.  He normally finds me lying on the ground and does the same thing, landing on my chest.  Sometimes he’ll catch me as I’m lying down near the couch, and he’ll leap off the couch and onto me.

On Saturday I decided I was going to do my first 50mi bike ride as training for my Yosemite ride next year.  My route had about 40mi of flat/basically flat pavement and 10 mi of climbing.  I rode from my house to Henry Coe County Park Headquarters, and then back home.  I felt pretty good at the top of the climb, but the major headwind on the way home almost did me in.  I did make it in 3:28, which I was very happy about.

So the other weekend I drove to Yosemite with my mother/father in law, my wife, and our kid to drop off my in laws as they were off on a 3 week hike of the John Muir Trail.  On the drive home I got to thinking to myself, “My in laws are hiking the John Muir Trail, they (and my wife) last year hiked to the top of Half Dome.  My wife has done a trail marathon in addition to other 5k, 10k, and half marathons.  Its my turn to do something crazy like that.”  So while we were driving down Hwy 120 I decided I was going to ride my road bicycle from my house in South San Jose over Tioga Pass to Lee Vining.

According to the route I drew up in Google Maps, my friend and I are looking at an approx. 240 mile ride, climbing approx. 18,000 ft over 2 or 3 days.  It looks like I’ve got some major training to do in the next few months, since we’ve got the ride tentatively scheduled for sometime in May.

Otherwise we had a pretty good trip.  Our two year old decided after his nap he wanted to throw a big tantrum, but after he got to pet some dogs he was better.

A few random photographs from the trip:

View of Upper Yosemite Falls from the car as we were heading into the Valley.

We camped out at the Wawona campground for the night and let Adam do what he loves doing – playing in the dirt.

My in laws as they were about to leave on their hike.

Adam loves water, and this was his reaction as he saw the Yosemite falls before we hiked to them.

Yes, he climbed all the rocks on his own, I was just there making sure he didn’t fall.

In the midst of tantrum #1 from being too tired and needing to take a nap.

This little guy posed for us for a little while.  I was wishing I had my 70-200 instead of just my 85mm f1.4 lens.

And this is why he is called the “Dirt Monster”

When the idea of us getting together for a portrait session the location was pretty easy for me to pick out.  We headed out to downtown San Jose to a location I’ve photographed at before to try out some new ideas as well as getting some specific photographs.  After we photographed there for a little while, we cruised around the outskirts of downtown looking for some other locations.  We found another great one across from and at the Shark tank (HP Pavilion, officially).

The Oakland Temple was a great place for wedding photographs today, and the weather gods sure  smiled on us today.  My assistant and I drove up from San Jose where it was about 75-80 degrees, while some of the wedding party heading down from Ft Bragg/Redding endured lots of rain on the way to Oakland.  Luckily we ended up with temps in the mid/high 70s, and at times the clouds came over & the breeze came up.  Our wedding for the day was for Kimberly & Eric, who we did engagement photos for while out in Prov0.

We got there a little early to do a little location scouting.  I love getting to a location early (even places I’ve photographed before) as it gives me a chance to scout out new locations or angles.  I’ve found doing this allows me to get unique photographs for each client though I may have photographed that same location many times before.  Arriving plenty early also gives me a little buffer time in the event there is bad traffic or something like that.

Since they had the only wedding that afternoon, they were spoiled in a big way, since we didn’t have to wait for people to move out of our way or speed up our formals to give the other brides & grooms a chance to have their images taken.  We also were able to wonder around the grounds and enjoy the day.

Big thanks to Shane for coming out again and helping out with the wedding.

And for fun we have a couple “behind the scenes” shots from the day.

It was a fun night being at prom. It was a little weird though being at the dance, yet I wasn’t dancing there. So I hung out in my little photo room with my laptop playing some tunes while I edited photos and also waited for the kids to come in to get their photo taken. Amazingly some people recognized my “ancient” music from the mid 90s – early 2000s.  So for those of you who made comments about it, thanks for making me feel young!

Also during the dance I made sure to have my friend send me text updates with the score of the Sharks game (which they won, advancing to the next round!).

So early in the night someone mentioned doing the old farmers pose holding the pitchforks, or swinging a baseball bat for a funny photo. I mentioned the only thing I had in my car that was close was some hockey sticks. And so I think I may be the first person to ever include hockey sticks in prom photos!  Semi-random photos chosen for the blog by what my tired eyes liked at midnight Saturday night.

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